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Genius on the Fly Symbols Over the Phenomena Themselves That Has Resonance in Elective Affinities

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Genius on the Fly Symbols Over the Phenomena Themselves That Has Resonance in Elective Affinities this change in their bonds to a reaction. Eduard jokes that Ottilie will form a ‘com- pound’ with Charlotte, but himself comes to see an affinity with her. Charlotte and the Captain are drawn to each other. When Eduard and Charlotte make love, their minds are occupied with thoughts of these others. It ends tragically. Charlotte gives birth to a son (another Otto), whom Ottilie accidentally drowns; Ottilie starves to death, followed by Eduard. Beyond its reading as a human analogue of chemical reactions, the novel is infused with aspects of Goethe’s science expressed in his quixotic Theory of Colour, published the following year. Goethe believed that Newton’s experiments with prisms were BRIDGES: BETSEY BRIDGES BLACK COLLECTION/FLIES: IMAGINAL DISC/LLC IMAGINAL COLLECTION/FLIES: BLACK BRIDGES BETSEY BRIDGES: flawed. He contended that white light was the fundamental phenomenon, and that Calvin Bridges experimented on fruit flies to make fundamental discoveries in genetics. colours were produced by interactions between light and darkness, perceivable by GENETICS the naked eye — incorrect, but an accurate record of how we perceive colour. How- ever, it is Goethe’s argument that Newton valued representation of phenomena in Genius on the fly symbols over the phenomena themselves that has resonance in Elective Affinities. Ewen Callaway reviews a biopic of Calvin Bridges, the Goethe’s novel can be seen as an attempt wild-living, wild-haired genetics pioneer. to show the consequences of the urge to abstraction. The narcissistic Eduard inter- prets isolated phenomena, such as head- alvin Bridges is best known for three The Fly Room syphilis. To feed the aches on the right side of his head and the things: his pioneering work on genet- WRITER/DIRECTOR: flies, near-rotting left of Ottilie’s, as symbols of affinity, and ics in the early twentieth century, his ALEXIS GAMBIS bananas were a hypothesizes from that. Goethe believed Cwomanizing and his gravity-defying mop Imaginal Disc: 2014. constant presence. that scientists should critically observe a of hair. The Fly Room, a biopic told through Those bananas broad spectrum of phenomena before the- the eyes of his daughter Betsey, also shows dangle from the ceiling in the film’s fiction- orizing. Eduard, driver of the tragic plot, is the scientist as a sometimes dedicated, often alized Fly Room, where Bridges and other Goethe’s personification of the flaws that distracted father who struggled to balance prominent figures in genetics sort dead flies he found in the science of his day. intellectual curiosity with family obligations. and trade rude witticisms. Betsey crashes this Although Elective Affinities scandalized The Fly Room came from a chance encoun- world after her mother, Gertrude, sends her nineteenth-century readers, its theme ter between geneticist-turned-filmmaker to spend time with her father. None of the and penetration sparked a cult following Alexis Gambis and Betsey, now in her nine- scientists knows what to make of the curious among writers. George Eliot — whose ties. It is bookended by interviews with her, girl, who carries her box camera everywhere. unmarried relationship with Goethe but focuses on a period in the 1920s, when Bridges is annoyed to have his sanctum dis- scholar George Henry Lewes was itself a ten-year-old Betsey visited her father’s work- turbed. But he warms to Betsey and puts her scandal — admired the novel, and it may place: the famed Fly Room at Columbia Uni- to use in the Fly Room, counting and char- have influenced her harrowing The Mill versity in New York City. The film was partly acterizing flies. He becomes so comfortable on the Floss (1860). Characters and plots crowdfunded through Kickstarter. Research- having his daughter around that he neglects in Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier ers including neuroscientists Joseph LeDoux to hide his after-hours philandering. (1915) echo it, and protagonists of John and Stuart Firestein have supporting roles. Much of the film unfolds in the Fly Room. Banville’s The Newton Letter (1982) are Bridges, portrayed by a wild-haired Haskell The set designers have paid close attention named Edward, Charlotte and Ottilie. King, was a star disciple of evolutionary biolo- to detail: for example, the microscopes are Goethe called for a “gentle empiricism”, gist Thomas Hunt Morgan (played by Fire- the binocular version that Bridges invented. believing that advanced human develop- stein). Under Morgan’s leadership, Bridges Bridges left his family; Morgan moved his ment (Bildung) was essential to the per- and a cadre of Young Turks characterized lab to the California Institute of Technol- ception of nature’s wondrous realities. mutant fruit flies — most famously, white- ogy and Bridges joined him. The Fly Room Elective Affinities, by questioning the fruits eyed varieties — to map the locations of genes makes no attempt to provide an authoritative of reductionism, challenges us to recall and to understand how they are transmitted. history, leaving many details to the epilogue. that no observer can ever be impartial. ■ Bridges’ work established that trait-deter- In an interview, 95-year-old Betsey says that mining genes are carried by chromosomes she never wanted to be like her dad. An apt Matthew Bell is professor of German and that parents pass to their offspring. He also sentiment about a father who was flawed — comparative literature at King’s College worked out how chromosomes — X and Y but who laid the groundwork for the modern London. His books include Melancholia: — determine the sex of fruit flies. science of heredity. ■ The Western Malady. He has edited a “It was not unusual for six of us to carry on forthcoming translation of Goethe’s works. in this small room,” Morgan remembered in Ewen Callaway writes for Nature from e-mail: [email protected] an obituary of Bridges, who died in 1938 from London. 11 DECEMBER 2014 | VOL 516 | NATURE | 169 © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
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